Happy Birthday H.A.L.!
Filed under: Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Fandom, Geek Report, Out of the Past, Celebrities Gone Wild!
Everyone's favorite homicidal computer - Arthur C. Clarke's H.A.L. 9000 from his book 2001: A Space Odyssey
- turns 9 years old today. A 2003 inductee into the Robot Hall Of
Fame (along with R2-D2 from Star Wars), H.A.L. murdered the crew of the spaceship Discovery in Clarke's
book and Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film (where a possible flubbed line had
the maniacal machine born five years earlier). H.A.L. stands for "Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic
computer", with "Heuristic" and "Algorithmic" being two primary processes of intelligence, as
the RHF website notes.Everyone's second favorite homicidal computer - a network (much like Al Gore's Internet) called SkyNet from James Cameron's The Terminator - turns 9 on August 29.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
1-12-2006 @ 4:57PM
James Hudnall said...
"H.A.L. stands for "Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer"
Actually, if you subtract one letter from HAL you get IBM. The design of the HAL logo is exactly like the logo on the IBM mainframes of the time (360).
Clarke just made up some bogus reason for why he's called HAL, but it was also an in joke
Reply
1-12-2006 @ 4:58PM
James Hudnall said...
I meant add, not subtract
Reply
1-29-2006 @ 7:00PM
tran nguyen said...
Actually IBM -1 -> HAL intentionally. Early in the film (on the shuttle flight to the partially constructed orbiting space station) all landing and docking proceedures are done by an IBM computer (freeze frame on chapter 4 or 5 and you will see clearly 3 CRTs with the IBM logo displayed. Many companies paid to get their logo into 2001, ibm, hilton, pan am, bell system, etc. But all specified NOT to use their logo in the evil part of the film, hence no lettering on the jupiter mission doomed spacecraft piloted by [IBM] -1 or HAL. To ensure that the contract was met with IBM, each letter was reduced by 1, however as has been pointed out the color scheme of hal's nameplate matches the IBMs of that era. Note, however, that there is no "pan universal" on the tail of the spacecraft - all other logos were removed, but IBMs sorta kinda stayed around morphed into HAL.
Reply